Indulging in some multigenerational travel with the youthful adventurer, the Bashful Adventurer books a stay in the Hotel Suisse Rome. Will it work out?
How to Choose a Hotel in Cancun
With so many hotels in Cancun to choose from, is the Hyatt Regency Cancun the right decision?
Cancun Tours: How Good Is the Gray Line?
Three times on my recent trip to Cancun I wound up on a Gray Line tour, and my experiences ranged from “highly recommend—would sign up again” to a less-than-entirely-enthusiastic “you get what you pay for.” Working in 700 locations around the planet, this is an outfit with some depth and experience. Professionalism and quality were…
Chichen Itza, Top to Bottom
Even as my lawyerly side contemplated liability, I relished climbing the monuments at the Mayan city of Chichen Itza on my first visit there 24 years ago. I remember hearing stories of high-heeled women falling to their deaths on the narrow steps of El Castillo, the pyramid on which the Mayan serpent god appears in…
Mayan Bloodletting at Chichen Itza: Any Worse than Ours?
On our way from Cancun to the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza, our tour guide takes care to note that the Maya should not be seen as savages. That he feels obligated to say that makes me think that other tourists must have referred to them as such, most likely because of their tradition…
Cancun for the Convenience
When heading to a place like Cancun, Mexico, I’m not going on a jungle-trekking adventure or anticipating anything much more rugged than rough water during a snorkel. I’m going for a getaway from the daily stress of my workaday world, which means that I’ll be expecting good service all the way around. On my recent…
What I Learned at Doctor Zhivago’s Revolution
It took me a half a dozen tries to get all the way through the three-hour-long 1965 film Doctor Zhivago, a love story set amid the backdrop of the Russian revolution but filmed elsewhere. Starring Omar Sharif as a doctor-poet, and Julie Christie as an unconvincing 17-year-old raped by her mother’s love interest, a member…
Our Perestroika
What’s engaging about the 2010 documentary, My Perestroika, and that was largely absent from my own visit to Russia isn’t so much the views of Moscow but the captured moments of real Russians, those not selling anything to tourists or trying to be pleasing in the hope of gaining a tip. The film follows a…
It Took Me a Lifetime to Get to the Kittle House, and Now I Need to Go Again
The Bashful Adventurer finally visits Crabtree’s Kittle House in Chappaqua, NY. Will this restaurant live up to its good reputation?
Roads through Russia
The story in the film Roads to Koktebel, that of a widower trekking to the Black Sea with his young son in the hope of starting a new life, seems emblematic of the Russian experience. The characters are resolute, obdurate. Their terrain is vast and harsh, but they’ve found a way to adapt, to make…